Among the different schools of thought competing to have their voices heard in current debates about the nature and importance of art is the field of study known as analytic aesthetics (or the analytic philosophy of art). An offshoot of analytic philosophy, analytic aesthetics is probably the most active school of philosophical aesthetics in the English-speaking world discussing aspects of visual art, literature, music, and general issues such as the nature of beauty, the Kantian notion of disinterestedness, the concept of taste and aesthetic pleasure.

This paper examines certain assumptions underlying analytic aesthetics. The issues examined are seldom discussed by analytic philosophers of art themselves – a matter of regret, as I will suggest – but they nevertheless tell us much about this field of study and the presuppositions on which it is based. The focus of discussion is the relationship between art (in the general sense) and time – not time as presented within works of art (how the passing of time might be represented in film or the novel, for example) but time as an external factor, time understood as the changing historical contexts through which works of art pass, which in some cases stretch over centuries or even thousands of years. What does this school of thought have to say about the relationship between a work of art and the processes of historical change? Relatively specific though it seems, this question take us to the heart of analytic aesthetics and reveals some of its major characteristics – and weaknesses.